Facebook customizes news feed for all connectivity bands

Menlo Park (US): Social networking giant Facebook on Tuesday said that it had customized its news feed for any connection speed.

“People are coming online at a staggering rate in emerging markets and, in most cases, are doing so on mobile via 2G connections. In order to make sure another billion people can connect using Facebook we need to design features of the product that work seamlessly regardless of mobile network and device,” Chris Marra, product manager, emerging markets and Alex Sourov, engineering manager, emerging markets, wrote in an official blog post.

“What this means for those of us on the News Feed team is making sure people can load and scroll through News Feed on any connection speed. We’ve worked on a few updates recently to improve the experience so it works seamlessly and quickly for people in all parts of the world,” they wrote.

According to Facebook, it takes many factors into account in News Feed to make sure users are seeing the most relevant stories – even the type of device the user is on or the speed of the mobile network or Wi-Fi connection.

“Taking all this factors into account helps us determine what kinds of stories to show in News Feed. For example, if an user is on a slower internet connection that won’t load videos, News Feed will show you fewer videos and more status updates and links,” said Sourov and Marra.

“We’re also investing in the best image formats for photo loading. We recently moved to a Progressive JPEG photo format which allows us to start showing lower-quality versions of photos while they’re still downloading, so you can see some of the photo instead of nothing,” they added.